Telling the family

On Tuesday I made the announcement to the extended family. The parents and siblings already knew, of course, so it was just a question of how to tell the cousins and aunts and uncles and so on. We debated a bit how to tell people, and in the end decide on a short and sweet email. We had thrown around a number of options, which got me thinking about how long distance communication has changed in the past few decades.

Thirty years ago a pregnancy announcement would have all been done almost entirely over the phone, calling on weekends or after 11pm. Phone the parents and siblings and maybe a few key extended family members and let them pass the info on virally. Some people might have even sent letters, or maybe some kind of share our joy mass mailing greeting card. This is just a guess since, as a kid, I wasn't really privy to the we're having a baby announcements.

Twenty years ago would not have been much different. Close family would be told over the phone. The dozen or so people you knew in other countries or states that had email could be told by email. Mass announcements to friends could be done on the more social Usenet groups.

Ten years ago there was a bit more choice. The younger generation of many families had email, plus a few in the older generations. I suppose I would have phoned the immediate family, IM'd those I could find logged on when I was around, and emailed the relatives I could. Then just rely on them to pass it around.

Today I find IM to be fairly useless. There are so many types that everyone seems to have the one you're not on. So it's really hard to find anyone around. I didn't even bother phoning the immediate family to make the announcement in the first place - I just used Skype. A video call is so much better to see the eyebrows raise when you tell them you're expecting. We considered using Facebook, but apparently they limit messages to 20 people max, and I'm not ready for a wall post about this yet. We ended up going with email is that it's so saturated that just about everyone has an account. It's just the easiest way to reach as many people as possible.

So, I managed to pull together about 50 email addresses in an hour or so and I was pretty sure they all worked. I sent off the message in the morning and spent the rest of the day slowly getting congratulations from people who live further and further east from us. It was nice to get all the good wishes. I suppose the you're doomed, doomed, I tell you comments will come from the friends when we tell them :)

On another note, I've decided this blog looks hideous. I need to sit down and figure out the set of bizarre incantations I need to invoke to twist this into something reasonable.

Ultrasound

Monday was the ultrasound scan. We found the place pretty easily this time since it where we accidentally ended up when we first went to UCH. At the reception they asked if we wanted photos from the scan, which would cost £2. The wife asked if they were on CD, to which they replied that the photos were on paper.

At this point a couple of things struck me. First that, really, in 2011, they would just print out the photos? Surely it would be trivial to burn to CDROM. The second was £2? Surely the cost of ink and paper would be only a few pence. I can see how they get away with it. £2 is certainly more than it actually costs to print the scan, but it's just small enough to say well, why not? So they get away with it (though I did overhear that some hospitals don't charge at all.)

We were called back immediately which was nice, especially since we were early (wanted to get to work at a reasonable hour, and the appointment was at 10). The usual height, weight and blood pressure, then we went to the ultrasound room.

The ultrasound machine had a massive CRT monitor. Another thing I'm surprised to see in 2011.

There were two technicians. One was obviously a bit more experienced than the other. However, the less experienced one was chattier and spoke loud enough we could clearly hear her, which was nice. She started the scan by pouring a mass of cold jelly on the wife's belly and moving around the magic sonogram wand. She said this is the bladder (big empty space), and this is your uterus (a smaller empty space), followed by you're definitely not 12 weeks pregnant.

At this point I do a minor very small panic. I mean, I know it's been 12 weeks. She tested positive at 5 weeks, and we couldn't be off by more than 2 weeks, and even a 10 week foetus would certainly be visible, and there was nothing there. One of the worries we'd been having was that there was no real direct sign she's pregnant. What if she's not pregnant? What do we do? Start trying again? Wait til we're more financially stable? What could have gone wrong? There's been no obvious showing or sickness. The only signs were the aching breasts. And lack of periods for 3 months. And oversensitive senses. And two positive tests. And she gets full really easily. And she.........

In the five seconds I'm doing my panic, the other technician comes over and says try looking over here, moves the wand a few cm and there it is on the monitor. A tiny little squirming person painted in little grainy specks.

Wow. It's real.

Still ultrasound pictures just don't prepare you for a real scan. The pictures are just blurry snapshots that you have to wrap your brain around. They never look like a baby. They look like… I don't know… something anatomical.

When it's live on video, it's clearly a baby. Your brain interpolates the video frames into the real picture. It's got the classic baby button nose and face. Hands and toes and it wriggles and sucks its thumb. Gets bored and turns over just when the technician is taking a measurement. All kinds of things a human would do (or a puppy, I'm not being prejudiced).

They measured all kinds of things. The more refined due date is 22 July, adjusted by 1 day from our initial estimates. We also got to hear the heartbeat (and see it). It's really very fast, like a beagle or something. For the nose bone measurement, the technician had to gentle prod the wee one to get it to move its hands out of the way. It was kind of cute watching it move.

I asked if they could tell the sex. The technician responded that it's not very clear this early and they wouldn't know for sure. She looked at the scanner for a bit and told us, saying that she was 70% confident. Given that that's only slightly better than the 50% chance of random guessing, I won't mention it here til we know for sure.

After the first set of scans they handed me the printouts of some of the better shots of the foetus. I flipped through them while the wife was having her BMI taken. They’re small and grainy (and at some point I'll have to find a scanner to get them digitised), but they're they only shots I have of the wee one, so they're kinda special anyway.

There was some more waiting while the test results came in. We hardly had time to slip through the scans before they called us back in for the results. All the blood tests and measurements showed nothing to be concerned about, which was a great relief. So I'm a bit more comfortable telling people now. So I think I'll start telling family and some friends in person (those we can manage to meet in person, it's so hard to meet up with people in January) before making any sort of public announcement.

Bad timing

As part of the masses of paperwork we got from the midwife, we got a guide to what benefits and financial help we can get as parents-to-be. First off, I think it's utterly brilliant that we get a extremely detailed centimetre-thick bound booklet Parent's guide to money. The downside is that that in several places there are notes like … until January 2011… or …born before 31 December 2010… and so on.

The new government is dropping or cutting back a number of benefits for parents. This is apparently a bad time to have a baby as far as government support goes. The big obvious ones I've noticed (that impact me) are:

• completely stopping the Health in Pregnancy Grant (a one-off £190 paid after 26 weeks)
• completely stopping Child Trust Funds (a savings account for your child they can use then hit 18)

On top of that, the Child Benefit (a weekly payment regardless of income) appears to also be cutting back, but I can't find anything which says definitively for whom it's being cut back and when. Either some people won't be able to get it at all, or they'll get it and have it taxed at 100%. The BBC seems to imply that the changes won't start til 2013. Does anyone know for sure? I don't want to get a benefit and find out a year later I have to pay it all back.

The annoying thing is that this is the first I've heard of most of these. Reading the booklet I keep thinking "wow, that's a great and really civilised idea! That'd definitely help." Which makes it all the worse with them being cut.

Now come the part I hope does not digress into a political rant…

It strikes me as odd that the government seems to be targeting its cuts in areas meant to ensure healthy and prosperous generations to come. So, in ensuring that the next generation is not saddled with debt, we're stripping from them both the things they need to get a good start in life and the tools they need to manage things for themselves. I just don't see how this isn't we-pay-now and they-pay-later. I'd much rather it be one or the other, not both. I'd much rather the next generation be in debt, but have the skills to pay it off. Or, more altruistically I'd much rather if I had to go through the whole cutbacks and austerity thing, that I'd be comfortable knowing the next generation would at least get off to a good start and a fair fighting chance of it when it came their turn.

Plus, to top it off, I may not be able to get paternity leave either. I'd have to be employed with my company for 6 months before taking it. The kidlet is due at the end of July. My company is downsizing and I have about a 50% chance of being made redundant by March. So I'd have to have a new job in place and started by the end of this month in order to be able to take my fortnight of leave. This, of course, is not helping.